THOUGH he thought it more prudent not to say so outright, Godwin had made up his mind to resist this lunatic scheme to the last ditch, as well as the plan to marry him to Karen. So they'd put him up as a figurehead King of Great Britain with the idea that Gram could always control him through his wife! From what he recalled of the proposed wife's brawn, perhaps Gram had something there, too.
While Gram had recovered the print of the photograph by Wolff, he had left behind the portrait photograph of the girl herself. Godwin glared at it. A handsome wench even if a little big and squarish. She must weigh nearly as much as he. He pointed to the inscription, Hjertlige Oensker, Karen af Greenland, and asked: "How do you pronounce that?"
Kaalund obliged with a jerky, guttural singsong. Godwin, staring at the print, was struck by the thought that Gram might have left it with him in the hope that he should fall in love with it. He cast it from him, saying, "Sven, put that thing on the bureau, face down. I don't care if she's Crown Princess of Greenland or Queen of Mars; the less I see—"
The door was opened by a nurse who stepped to one side and curtsied as another woman entered. Kaalund heaved himself erect again and bowed, crying,
"God Dag, Hoeched!"
Godwin blinked and looked again. Yes, it was the red-haired girl on the beach: Karen Hauch, Princess of Greenland.
Chapter 3
CLAUDE GODWIN stared. His imagination had been adding little by little to his unwanted fiancée's thews until he pictured her as a veritable female gorilla; and here she turned out to be not so big after all. She was better-looking than he remembered her even if not quite the beauty that the photographer had made her out in the portrait.
"Well!" she said. "So you are the terrible Claude Godwin!" She spoke with less accent than Sven Kaalund. though her English was not so flawless as the Prime Minister's.
"That's right," he said. "I suppose you want to see what your partner in sin looks like before it's too late?"
"You need not be so nasty, Mr. Godwin. After all it was your own doing that got us into this fix, and I am not' liking it any better than you."
"But you know nothing happened!"
"Are you sure?"
"I think you would have woke up," he said dryly; "so why didn't you tell 'em so?"
"I did but they did not believe. My poor father was terribly shocked by that photograph. So now I am stuck with you."
"What's so terrible about me?" he retorted, stung. "Lots of dames think a movie-star's a pretty good catch."
"Oh, I did not say there was anything really wrong with you. In fact one might say you were quite pretty." (Godwin winced.) "But you know what self-centered and immoral people actors are, and I could have had the captain of the U. S. C. football team; he was a big man."
"Is that so? Well, I could have—" began Godwin hotly, then thought better of what he was going to say. "But let's not fight over who got rooked the worse on this deal. I don't suppose you have any idea how to get out of it?"
"No-o", she said, with a glance at Kaalund, who was taking all this in. "We shall have to make the best of it; perhaps love will come after the first ten or twenty years."
Godwin realized that they could not make any serious plans for evading their fate in Kaalund's presence, and that Gram was determined to keep Godwin under close surveillance until he had accomplished his aims. While Gram's political objectives sounded no more wicked than most political maneuvers, the thought of being used as a passive pawn in this game made Godwin clench his fists with rage.
"Your sense of humor." he said, "is well-developed but gruesome. When they gonna let me outa this box?"
"Tomorrow, they tell me. And now I must leave to shop down-town for my—how do you say—torso?"
"Trousseau," said Godwin with a shudder. "You got the other already, worse luck."
"And to keep you from being bored by the wait, I am giving you these." She brought out of her handbag a white paper bag which she handed him, saying: "Ne les avalez pas; serrez-les entre les dents."
"Hey!" Sven Kaalund spoke up. "No languages I am not understanding! You speak English, Dansk, or notting else!"
Godwin blinked in bewilderment. He had a limited knowledge of French, dating back to an abortive singing career, and it seemed to him that she was telling him not to swallow the bag but to do something to it with his teeth.
"Thanks," he said.
"It is nothing. I shall be seeing you again, yes?"
"All too soon, I'm afraid. G'bye, Miss—uh—what shall I call you?"
"The people here say 'Your Highness' but that is too formal for your betrothed. And I do not know you well enough —for 'Karen', because we Greenlanders are not using first names everywhere as you do in the United States. So call me 'Miss Hauch'."
"Okay, Miss Hauch. S'long."
She was gone. Kaalund rumbled: "Let me see dat bag, Claude. I am here from being poisoned to stop you as veil as other tings."
Godwin wordlessly handed over the bag. Kaalund looked in and handed it back. "Gumdrops!"
Godwin took out a gumdrop. Now the pattern became a little clearer. She must have said something like "Do not swallow them; hold (or pinch) them between the teeth." If it had only been possible for her to repeat the sentence ... he gripped a gumdrop firmly between his molars. It softened and dissolved with the passing of the minutes. Now, if she had meant to convey a message in one of these things, it would be in some sort of capsule. He would have to eat his way through the entire bag to be sure.
When the first gumdrop had gone the way of all confections he took a second. Kaalund looked at him with a mouth-watering expression, but Godwin hard-heartedly ignored it and continued to consume the candies himself. It would hardly do to have the message-capsule eaten by his guardian. The detective muttered something about; "I see vat she meant by de kind of people actors is!"
Godwin continued devouring his way through the bag. When he had eaten over half the gumdrops, he came to one that felt a little different from the others. It had a hard core, and as the gelatinous outside dissolved away his teeth closed down upon this object, not much bigger than a vitamin pill. As he wondered whether he would have to hide the capsule under his tongue until Kaalund was asleep so that he could investigate it more closely, a buzzing sensation in his teeth startled him so that he almost dropped the thing out of his mouth.
Recovering in time he gripped the capsule more firmly. The thing contained a tiny sound-record player which had been actuated by the pressure of his teeth, and which was now playing off its record. The sound was transmitted through his teeth and skull so that he could hear it quite clearly though nobody else could. He heard, Mr. Godwin! Mr. Godwin! This is Karen Hauch. By now you know of Minister Gram's plans for us-I do not wish to marry you and I suppose you feel the same way. Our only chance of escape is by air, but I do not know if I can make arrangements; see if you can bribe Detective Kaalund.
The record stopped. Godwin bit it again without result. He had heard of these phonographic capsules; the only way to repeat the record would be to unscrew the casing and wind it up again with a microscopic screw-driver. After some thought Godwin swallowed the capsule.